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‘So,’ you ask, ‘where did you get the idea for Harry from? I mean, some of those things he gets up to…’ You scrunch your eyes closed for a second as if trying to rid yourself of the memories. ‘Awful, just awful.’ Harry. He’s the killer in my book, Touch. He’s not particularly pleasant, I’ll give you that, but awful? I’m offended. I shake my head. ‘If you think Harry’s bad then you should meet some of my other friends,’ I say. An uneasy look passes across your face, but I ignore it and begin tell you about Ted, a kind, charming and charismatic young man; Jeffrey, who likes to spend time arranging things in his flat; Dennis, who once had a bit of a problem with his drains; Harold, the odd one out; Fred, who’s got something missing in the IQ department, sure, but a salt-of-the-earth type nevertheless. Shorn of their surnames my little coterie might appear innocent enough. They could be a bunch of guys who turn out down the park to play cricket on a Sunday afternoon or more likely that group of men who shuffle dominos in the corner of your local on Thursday evenings. There’s something about the decent, old-fashioned names – none of this Joshua, Ethan, Jake nonsense – which suggests dependability. As Fred packs away the dominos you’d go over, ask him what he’s drinking, get one in for him. Pint on the table in front of his big, rough, craftsmen’s hands, you’d ask how’s he placed to come round and sort out that dripping tap for you. Spare key’s under the flowerpot to the side of the back door, you’d say. Let yourself in any time. Fred’s a builder, see? Surname of West. On second thoughts maybe you should fix the tap yourself. Read More

Camilla Lackberg’s irresistible new book THE LOST BOY is out today, and we are celebrating by giving away 5 copies! All you have to do is tell us which is your FAVOURITE Camilla Lackberg book, and why? We’ll reveal the 5 lucky winners… Read More

Calling all fans and bloggers! Could you interview bestselling author Andrew Taylor? As so many of you approached us about reviewing The Scent of Death, we want to offer you the opportunity to interview Andrew Taylor for yourselves! The bestselling author of The American Boy returns with a brilliant new historical thriller set during the American War of Independence. Simply send in 3 questions that you would ask him if you had the chance - either as a comment, a Facebook message or an email to killerreads@harpercollins.co.uk. The three best sets will get a copy of the book and a chance to add two more questions before we put their questions to Andrew Taylor, and the final interviews will be published here on the Killer Reads site. Read More

Thank you to everyone for entering, it was wonderful to see so many responses! But unfortunately we can only pick one winner… The Kindle Fire goes to… Lynne Griffiths! The lucky runners-up will win a signed copy of Catch Your Death and All Fall Down: Julie Moore Christine… Read More

  Luke Delaney isn't just an ex-Police Detective, he's also our brand new crime author, and he's about to release a book, Cold Killing, that we're all unbelievably excited about. Below, you can read what he told us about how he became a writer, and beneath that there's an opportunity to read the first two chapters from Cold Killing. In case the title doesn't already give it away, this isn't a book to read before bedtime...   "My senior school was a huge inner city affair. I often thought we were sent there to keep us off the streets rather than to be educated, the teachers having long since given up on us, but even then I loved to write stories. Unfortunately, if the school itself wasn’t a big enough obstacle to any literary ambitions, I was also slightly dyslexic and found my inability to spell and lack of grammar defeated me. I left school, as did most of us, with almost no qualifications. Read More

You are a husband and wife writing team. How do you go about plotting and writing the novel together? Do you ever argue over the plot?   We’ve tried to write together several times over the years, but each time the cooperation has almost immediately turned into huge arguments and minor catastrophes. As a result of this we came up with the idea of creating a brand new writer.   Since we started to write as Lars Kepler we haven’t had a single fight – it has actually given us a wonderful, creative rush. Many authors who work together write alternate chapters or divide the characters in the story between them. We don’t do that, we write everything together, like two people playing the piano with four hands. If we were to flick through The Hypnotist or our sequel The Nightmare we wouldn’t be able to find one single sentence that only one of us wrote. It’s all the work of Lars.   We always start with discussion. What is bothering us, what makes our hearts beat faster? Is our idea good enough? Our friends and families probably get sick of us sometimes. We’re talking about the plot, about ideas and characters, we talk all the time, when we cook, when we are shopping for dinner and when we pick up the kids from school. If we have a good idea in the middle of the night, we wake each other up. Read More

It’s difficult to recall exactly when the idea behind STALKERS first came to mind. It was quite a few years ago now – I recall that much. I’m pretty sure I was having a brain-storming session at the time, taking my dog for a walk with Dictaphone in hand, trying to come up with as many high concepts as possible – either for story, novel or script.   When STALKERS first jumped into my head, I remember being quite shaken because it was so grotesque a notion that I couldn’t see it working outside the horror genre, and even then it might have been deemed gratuitous. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to see how it could also fit into a police thriller context - that way it could be more about the investigation than the crimes themselves. Read More

An enormous thank you to everyone who entered our Friday Giveaway competition!  We had a fantastic line up and your entries were brilliant, making it incredibly hard to pick the winners, but we eventually narrowed it down to... A Foreign Country goes to Jake Eliot, who said: I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Charles Cumming's latest, A Foreign Country. I enjoyed watching Skyfall at the cinema, but it’s high time Bond’s flashy suits and big explosions cleared the way for proper suspense, taut dialogue and authentic spycraft. And by the sound of it, I reckon following Tom Kell tracing the disappearance of the first female head of MI6 across Europe and Africa will help me put the stresses of my working week into perspective. Read More

FRIDAY GIVE AWAY! You could win one of the books in our arms! Just comment here or on our Facebook Page to tell us which one you want and why! Best answers will win and we'll pick our winners on Monday. Just in case you can't see clearly, the books we're carrying are: Close to the Bone by Stuart MacBride Read More

Fed up with Valentine’s? Want to read about serial killers, killer viruses or gangland executions instead? We don’t blame you. In fact, we’ve put together a list of our top Valentine’s reads so that you can do just that! Stalkers Happy publication day to Paul Finch! And what a Valentine’s treat he’s got for you… In his nail-shredding debut Stalkers, Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenberg investigates the disappearance of 38 different women, each one happy and successful until they vanished without a trace. Dragged into the dark underbelly of the crime world, Heck soon stumbles across the so-called ‘Nice Guys Club’, a gang who can arrange anything you want. Provided you pay the price…   Killing Cupid/All Fall Down Doesn’t love always feel this way? Alex Parkinson is in love with his writing tutor, Siobhan. He has never loved anyone like this, but how can he convince Siobhan that they are meant to be together? So Alex stalks her on Facebook and finds out where she lives, buys her presents using her own credit card and sends her messages telling her exactly what he wants to do to her. He breaks into her house, reads her diary and secretly listens to her while she takes a bath. Isn’t that what all lovers do?   We also have to say congratulations to Voss and Edwards on the publication of All Fall Down! Whether you want to read about bleeding hearts in Killing Cupid or killer viruses in All Fall Down, they’ve got it all covered... Read More

Some of you savvy crime readers may have already heard of self-publishing sensation Mark Sennen, whose ebook debut, Touch, recently rocketed up the bestseller lists. Following this success, he’s now been warmly welcomed onto the Avon crime list, and the whole team are extremely excited to be publishing his unforgettable thrillers. Obviously we love to quiz our authors when they join us, so scroll down and find out what Mark had to say for himself when we were lucky enough to chat to him recently. If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you take with you? My Kindle? I've got hundreds of books on it and… oh, OK, if that’s not allowed I’d try to sneak along my set of Patrick O’Brian ‘Aubrey/Maturin’ novels. Read More

 My first two novels, The Istanbul Puzzle and The Jerusalem Puzzle are set mainly in the cities of their titles. I decided to write them because I’ve always enjoyed travelling, seeing other cultures and trying to understand what make them tick. The Istanbul Puzzle was easier to write because I have been there about a dozen times. What struck me most about the city was how different it was from my preconceptions. We don’t see much in the media about Istanbul, even these days. Whatever we do see is usually about football hooligans or bomb attacks, and it’s usually quite negative. I had never, for instance, heard anything about Hagia Sophia, the symbol of Istanbul and one of the greatest buildings in the world. What attracted me to Hagia Sopia were the mysteries that still surround it. One mystery I explore in The Istanbul Puzzle is what is underneath it. There have been few underground excavations at Hagia Sophia. Read More